The Trouble With Facebook
by Josephine Braddock
Summary: An article about the dangers of Facebook, and why middle school children should not have Facebook accounts.
1. The Trouble With Facebook: My Article

**The Trouble With Facebook**

**By: Hanna Rivkah Stern**

**Note: The Facebook comments in this article are not real.****  
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There are over 400 million active users on Facebook. Are you one of them? Although Facebook has its advantages, for middle school kids, it can do more harm than good. Teenagers think Facebook is a way to say things to other people without their parents knowing. The truth is, any Facebook page, conversation, picture, or comment can be printed out, and can possibly get a person into major trouble. A few reasons are cyber-bullying, giving out personal information, and how harm can come from these reasons.

The first reason why Facebook is not a good idea for middle school children is cyber-bullying. Kids have conversations like:

_ Victoria: Did you hear bout Abby?_

_ Natalie: No! What?_

_ Victoria: She dumped Vincent!_

_ Natalie: Seriously? Shes such a bitch!_

_ Victoria: I know!_

In this scenario, two girls are talking about a third girl who just broke up with her boyfriend. The girls begin to call her names. Then, Abby posted a picture. These conversations led to these types of comments about her picture:

_Abby:Chek out my new profile pic! =D  
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_Natalie: Ew! her nose is weird. It looks like a pig nose. Oink! Oink! Abby_

_Victoria: Gross! Abby ur weird._

As you can see, cyber-bullying can take place everywhere. People post degrading comments, like in the example above. Also people can send messages to people that they wouldn't say face to face, such as:

_Devin: Evry1 hates u LOSER :( HAHAHAHA_

These messages can do so much damage to a person's self esteem. Also people know how to use photoshop, so anyone can photoshop a profile picture and make it embarassing. Then, they can cause major blows to a person's self confidence by putting those pictures on Facebook. Many people have committed suicide because of bullying. Remember, **anything** you post on Facebook can be printed out. These are just some of the ways cyber-bullying happens.

Next, people can give out personal information to people they think they trust. This happens every day. The average Facebook user has about 130 friends. That is a lot. Many of these people were probably just added as friends because they look cute. This can be a major problem because many adults make fake Facebook pages to lure in teens. Teenagers begin to develop an online relationship with their "friend". After a few days, weeks, or maybe months, the "friend" asks for the teen's phone number or other personal information. The teen agrees, not because the teen knows the person, but because they _think_ they know the person. This is how people get hurt.

Finally, there are many stories, good and bad, about Facebook. One article was called "Secret Life of Teens: Facebook - The Trouble with Facebook". This article states how kids get into trouble using Facebook. One student even states "'If you have enemies - you're done.'" Also, at Wootton High, the student government created a fake profile for a cute boy named Trevor. He got over 500 friend requests and 10 girls agreed to meet him. The student officers gave out color coded bracelets based on the amount of personal information given out. Yellow was for kids who listed cell numbers and red was for kids who gave out addresses, work information, or home phone numbers. Also, to raise awareness about the messages being posted on Facebook, the officers picked out quotes from students' wall messages. Some included:

-_Not Jewish, thank you very much._

-_I hate dumb people, especially blonds with a lot of acne._

-_I love getting high._

-_Rape is not a crime-it's surprise sex._

These messages were printed out and posted around the school.

Also, we've all heard the "Horror Stories" of Facebook. In these stories, a young girl begins an online relationship with a predator. The girl thinks the predator is a cute boy of her age. The girl's relationship with the predator deepens. The girl begins to give out personal info to this predator, whom she thinks she is close to. The predator and the girl agree to meet. Keep in mind, the girl thinks the predator is a boy of her age and that they are in to each other. The girl comes face-to-face with her predator. The girl may become raped, injured, kidnapped, or, worst of all, killed. This is why it is important not to post **any** personal information on Facebook.

All in all, Facebook is not the best choice for middle school kids. It leads to all kinds of trouble. This trouble is cyber-bullying and giving out personal information. Remember, you can be raped, injured, kidnapped, or **killed** for what you post. So before you post that picture, make that nasty comment, or send that message, think twice.


	2. The Trouble With Facebook: Horror Story

**Facebook Horror Story**

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><p>**The views in the following article are <em>not <em>mine. This is _not_ my article but merely a story I have found on the internet.**

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><p>Or, What Happens to your photos once you post them on Facebook.<p>

So you have a Facebook profile and you enjoy reading daily updates from your friends and browsing their photo albums. You also enjoy posting your own photos and updating your status. It's fun and safe, you think, because after all, you use the privacy settings to not show your profile in search results and all your photos are accessible to your friends only. You feel in complete control of everything that you've added to Facebook so far.

But do you realize that simply by posting your photo on Facebook you grant the site the right to reuse that Photo for any purpose they please. Yes, they can use your private photos anytime anywhere because you grant them that right. You don't believe me? Read this directly from their Terms of Use:

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><p>"<strong>By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing."<strong>

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><p>No big deal, you think, because after all you can delete your photos on Facebook can't you? In fact you can't. You can't delete your account either. Still don't believe me? More from the Terms:<p>

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><p>"<strong>You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content."<strong>

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><p>So as you just read, even when you delete something from Facebook it remains there indefinitely. Even though they say that the license you granted theme expires ask yourself this: if they did not intend to reuse your content why would they keep it?<p>

You might be thinking it's no big deal because you're not famous. The fact is it may not bother you now but who knows in 2, 5, 10, 20 years what will you think of it?

And this is not even the horror story I promised. Nope, I have my very own your-content-is-ours-and-we-keep-it-forever story with Facebook.

So here I am, a reluctant but long time hi5 user now on Facebook where many of my hi5 friends seem to have migrated. I added just one picture so my long lost classmates can recognize me when I send them friend requests.

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><p>One day, a friend sent me an invite to install an application. Actually the application used my friend's details to send me an invite to install it. While in one of those confusing pages where you choose what type of access to grant the application I see a Facebook-like button telling me I have one message. Thinking the message was from the application I clicked.<p>

I know I should have been more careful but I would have never guessed that Facebook allowed ads with buttons that look exactly like the ones on the site. Truly, it's the most misleading ads I've ever seen. Anyway, I clicked then it happened. I saw myself on a site I had never heard of. The site had my Facebook profile photo and my public details. I was horrified. How to remove myself from this site? HOW! I tried and tried and just wouldn't find anything. This site that I shall not name, wanted me to think that they had imported my Facebook details to it and created a profile for me. I'll call the site, the Site Without a Name, SWN for short.

After investigating a little I realized that in fact what happened is even scarier. This 'SWN' was 'reading' my Facebook information from my browser session. Don't ask me how I don't know, maybe it's some sort of spyware. What it does is as long as your logged into Facebook it shows your profile picture and any public info you have available. Which means, if you Log out of Facebook and go on SWN site, it no longer shows your so-called profile but tells you that the site is 'Not open to you'. And it shows you an add for a Facebook application (I wonder if I can report this application and have it banned from Facebook?). As soon as you click on the ad it sends you to what looks like a Facebook login page (you can never be 100% sure these days) so you can login and proceed to install the application.

In a moment of panic, I deleted my profile photo. Hoping that it would no longer show up on the SWN profile page. Since they take the information from Facebook that should certainly solve the problem since the photo is no longer there, right? Wrong! Remember what you read earlier about Facebook keeping your content indefinitely. You see, each photo you add has a unique address and it is that address that the SWN site uses. When you delete the photo from your profile, it simply does not show up in your profile but its address remains the same. Since the SWN site knows your photo's address, it can reuse it at will even when it does not show up in your profile.

But the horror doesn't stop here. As I was getting used to my faceless profile, looking at what my friends where doing and just browsing around on Facebook. The most horrifying thing that ever happened to me on a social network happened. Keep in ming that I've tried many social networks and I'm active in quite a few, Friendster, hi5, Orkut, Myspace, WAYN, Mash(R.I.P.), 360 and I'm probably forgetting a few. As I was browsing and went back to the home page it was there... The photo that I had deleted. How? Where? When? I have not idea. I hadn't reupload it but it was there starring at me. Facebook was asking me to crop it. I was so stunt that I just didn't do anything. What happened can anybody tell me?

For a moment I wanted to set it back as my profile picture, yet I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if I simply clicked 'close' (Close what? I have no idea. Facebook is one of the most confusing sites I've even used). So I did it, closed and was back to my picture-less profile.

So now it's official, I think Facebook is dangerous.


End file.
